Public Meeting on London Mayor - Chiswick

Does it matter who's the Mayor of London? 

Tuesday, April 5,  8:00 PM

Chiswick Town Hall (Committee Room)

Heathfield Terrace,

London W4 4JN

Who Needs a City Boss?

Any politician takes on the job of running the general affairs of capitalism has to accept, and do accept, the way the capitalist system works and that is to place profits above people. The Socialist Party argues no politician can help you so why vote for them? We in the Socialist Party are well aware that in the end whatever arrangements are adopted for local government in London won't make much difference. This is because such arrangements are to be implemented within the context of the profit system, whose economic mechanisms require all levels of government, however structured, to trim their spending so as not to endanger profit levels whatever people may want - or vote for.

Even so, an elected mayor is not a good idea as this is to elect a “leader” for London. This “leader” will not just have more power than the elected assembly but will be paid a fat-cat salary (so as to remove, it is said, the temptation to be corrupt) and have the remit of managing London as if it were a capitalist enterprise. But worse, it encourages people to think that some Leader can solve society's problems for them, whereas these problems can only be solved by people refusing to follow leaders and acting for themselves. The only kind of politics that is going to work is a do-it-yourself politics aimed at abolishing the profit-system. The whole proposal is a travesty of democracy. Democracy means participating in the running of affairs, not following leaders.

Real democracy is not possible under capitalism where a minority own and control the means of production and are therefore more equal than the rest of us and where the mechanisms of the profit system work to frustrate what people vote for from being carried out. The only way everybody can participate and have a genuinely equal say in how things are run is in a classless society based on common ownership. This is still our position and the message we would put over.